How is Digital Marketing Done?

So, what steps should be taken to create a healthy digital marketing campaign? Like every business, digital marketing has certain patterns and stages. Digital marketing, which has been developing rapidly for years, has become systematic with the introduction of search engines and e-commerce activities into our lives. Although this system has not started to be transferred to pre-university education through official education channels in our country, academic studies have contributed to the determination of the steps of digital marketing.

1- Set your goals

Setting goals should be the first step in starting a digital marketing campaign. It is also important to clearly define this goal. Do you want to create brand awareness, increase sales, or increase website traffic? Because you will determine a new strategy according to the decided goal and act accordingly.

It doesn't make sense for someone who wants to create brand awareness to spend huge amounts of money on e-commerce systems or search ads. In the first place, he will want to highlight social media. Therefore, the orientation should be accordingly.

2-Determine the target audience

One of the greatest conveniences that digital marketing offers us is the opportunity to advertise to the determined target audience at certain times. This allows us to reach more targeted audiences while spending less money. Therefore, it is very important to determine the target audience and analyze it well. Is our target audience Z generation, middle-aged women, people who follow basketball, people who make a habit of going out once a week, audiences who like to shop online?

You can also target different people on your different social media accounts. While targeting the young audience who shoot and share reels videos on your Instagram account, you can target professionals and over a certain age on your LinkedIn account. You should set this targeting according to your needs.

3- Determine your budget for each digital marketing channel

The budget is the most important item and no one has a penny to waste. Therefore, you should do the budget calculation very well and create a separate chart of accounts for each item if necessary.

If you plan to use strategies such as SEO, content creation, you will not need to allocate a lot of budget. At this point, you need labor rather than money. It might even make more sense to devote some of your budget to employee motivation :)

On the other hand, if you want to compete with other brands by campaigning through Google Ads, you may need to allocate a large budget. The point you need to pay attention to here is the calculation of the cost per click of Google Ads campaigns. Find the accepted CPC (cost-per-click) rate for your industry on the Internet and calculate your budget accordingly. Ready-made software for budget calculation is also available on the Internet.

4- Strike a balance between paid and non-paid digital marketing strategies

In digital marketing, paid and non-paid strategies can coexist. For example, you have identified a strategy for an SEO campaign or marketing content to potential customers. For this strategy, you must first determine the character of the customer, what they will want and how they will want it. Then you are expected to make a plan for at least 6 months and act in accordance with this plan. In this 6-month period, it is necessary not only to be satisfied with the grace plan, but also to develop paid strategies to support this plan.

Search engine ads, which give faster results than SEO, do not always have to be just for increasing sales. Sometimes it can also be used to support SEO activities.

It is unhealthy for a company to stick to only paid advertising or only non-paying strategies like SEO. As a result, a good balance should be established between these two, and one should not be stuck in one strategy.

5- Prepare content

If you are a food company, make a recipe video, if you are a tourism agency, share blog posts about 'must see places' or sponsor a traveler and share content, if you are a car company, provide information about carbon gases. In short, create content. It is important for these content to touch customers and for them to connect with you. Deliver your content consistently and with value. As your customers share your content, they will advertise on your behalf. Every like, every interaction is very important.

6- Make everything mobile compatible

More than 60% of internet users use their mobile devices. Your website, digital ads, graphics, e-mails, in short, everything must be mobile compatible. Customers who have problems logging in from mobile leave the pages without hesitation and do not open that page again. It is very important that all digital assets are adapted to mobile devices in order to keep the user experience at a high level and to make users comfortable during their time.

7- Do a good keyword research

One of the most important points in digital marketing is keywords. Even though keywords are sometimes very challenging and difficult to tackle, a good keyword analysis can put your website ahead of your big competitors very quickly. Especially well-targeted long-tail keywords will make you stand out, regardless of the size of the competitor.

It should be noted that keyword trends are constantly changing. Therefore, it is necessary to use keyword planning tools such as Search Console, Google Ads keyword planner, Ahrefs, Semrush, Ubersuggest well and to follow the innovations constantly. Keywords used in advertisements and SEO activities should be checked at least once a month.

8- Measure how far you can reach your goal

Finally, of course, the most important point is to measure how well you can reach your goals. Although it is easy to measure this for e-commerce companies, businesses that focus only on social media and website traffic, it can be a bit challenging in some cases. For this, you should set yourself KPIs related to your field and measure the right metrics.

Google Analytics will be your biggest helper in this sense. A digital marketing specialist should definitely be able to read and interpret Google Analytics data very well. A Google Analytics account combined with a tag manager and a well-organized sales funnel will put you a few steps ahead of your competitors and enable you to identify the most efficient strategies for your company. Related to this  What is Google Analytics? You can read our comprehensive Google Analytics Getting Started Guide  .

Conclusion

Digital marketing has now become a part of business life, a unit that every company that offers a product or old new service should establish. Digital marketing activities have undoubtedly opened and will continue to open new business doors. Every description and every information given about this field, which has never lost its dynamism, will become obsolete in a very short time and will be adorned with new perspectives. As a result, we can say that digital marketing will remain an area that requires constant change and development and that the movement never stops.